> All you fools who called Bush II "the worst President ever" are now seeing the true worst President > ever in action.
Obama had not been president during bush, so its not an either or, they can both be the worst president ever for their time in history, and I would submit, that is not only what happened, but its an unbroken tradition since at least Ike.
> Jimmy Carter - previous holder of that title - is ecstatic.
He was dethroned handidly by Reagan. Reagan who continued to push the drug war bringing us the highest murder rate since alcohol prohibition ended. We saw the draining of the SSI trust fund (which was supposed to be firewalled from the rest of the budget) under him. We saw a terrible arms race that helped to set up many of our current day wars...and the massive increase in national debt.
> Don't think 0bama is the worst ever?
Someone might not, but, hes at least on par with the rest of them.
yup, that is exactly what I was thinking. Essentially, beyond their TM, they have very little stick to wave around.
If hobbiest and small manufacturer squatters start using a VID or two and they decide to assign that VID to someone, that company is going to get screwed and is going to be mad about it, but, when they find out that the USB folks had been informed and knew about the squatters, and assigned him that VID anyway....hes likely to be mad....at them.
Its a problem they can really do nothing about unless they decide to play nice and try to mitigate it.
All in all though, this is why I like UUID OID schemes. Just make a large enough space that collisions are less likely than hitting a full Keno slate (which has never been reported to have actually happened, despite the constant stream of games being played)
Then you have your certification process certify an approved list of OID that have been submitted and gone through the process.
Um you mean above and beyond sales tax? Cars generally are subject to sales tax too, this is more about use tax. Car road use tax is implemented as a gas tax. I know of nothing similar for shoes and sneakers.
> Surely the point of doing illegal cash business *is* to evade the taxes, otherwise what would be the > point doing it?
However, without the illegal cash business, there are no taxes to pay. The point of the business is not to evade taxes, its to make money. It is true that most illegal businesses do not pay taxes, but to say that is the point of them is really to put the cart before the horse.
The point of doing it is likely that he makes more as a bookie than he would at any legal job he could get. Also, and mind you, I don't know the guy and can't ask him, he might actually enjoy the business itself.
> If he's reporting his illegal cash business then he must be paying the correct tax on it otherwise the > IRS response would be "yes, he didn't pay tax on XYZ portion of his income". By paying the tax > he's breaking the law, informing the authorities and *not getting any benefit from it
No, by paying the tax he is complying with the law. He broke the law by how he got the money in the first place. Not paying the tax is actually breaking an additional law, on top of the one that he broke in making his income.
> Step 4 is traditionally supposed to be "profit"...
I suspect he does, hand over fist, Uncle Sam isn't putting him out of business, just getting his beak wet.
Not sure many corporations would have bothered to put the effort in, even so, most corporations have not taken the mantle unto themselves to be the model for freedom and justice in the world (I know; stop laughing, I am trying to make a point here) .
What others would do is immaterial, what they should have done is realized that part of their job is to set an example and that example includes respecting the right of people to freely assemble (even in new technological forms) and speak
Given that whoever it was only spoke and gave away nothing that would otherwise constitute a crime, they should have not even attempted to discover who he was.
> By the way, the phrase "security through obscurity" is a reference to encryption schemes that rely > upon the algorithm not being known for its protective value, not to the general idea of > keeping secrets.
Which is why he used it correctly. Remember the claim is that public knowledge that the programs really exist and basics on how they work is enogh to decrease their utility ot make them not work.
So the very working of the system is, claimed anyway, to rely on obscurity to work.
It's worth mentioning that while it's *lawful* to do that, it's not necessarily wise. Cops don't like it, random people don't like it, and if the cops get called, more often than not they'll scrutinize every last thing you're doing, hoping to find some rule you're breaking just so they can get you and your scary open-carried gun out of public view.
As a Boston city boy, I may not have had exposure to gun owners if not for my father, who became a non-gun owning city dweller, AFTER living in the country where you were expected to have a gun by the age of 12 or so; and having been a hunter.
I remember realizing that to have a gun and hunt you would have to get out there to the hunting grounds with your gun so you must have to transport it, so I asked him about that, and so from an early age I was told that, in fact, its perfectly legal to transport guns, even in the city, but there are rules. He also told me one other thing.....
He told me that whenever he had to travel in public with one of his guns, he would always take the bolt out and shove it in his pocket. That way it was obvious (to anyone with half a brain, but particularly to any police) that it was unloaded and safe. So....even 30 years ago when I was just a kid...these issues were definitely on the minds of gun owners.
The gov already has an answer to privacy concerns like this. They have already implemented it. I do, for the record, dislike and distrust it, but, they have one: Seal the records.
An accountant friend explained to me once why a bookie he knows reports 100% of his income to the IRS, including the illegal cash business. The reasoning was simple, if the police suspect an illegal business but can't fully prove it, they can ask the IRS to check out whether it looks like you evaded taxes.
Now, the police can't access your records, the IRS, by law, must keep those records secret. However, they can, review and audit themselves. So, the police can tip off the IRS that you have an illegal business, but if you reported all the income, all the IRS can do is say "Everything looks in order".
So simple: Seal the records with a traffic tax agency, who is forbidden by law from releasing any personally identifying information, except for the purpose of prosecuting evasion of the taxes which they are charged with collecting.... say until.... 75 years after the death of the identified individual.
Then they will secretly share it all with the NSA, who will use it to send anonymous tips to law enforcement to built parallel evidence chains against people without revealing where the tip came from. No problem!
Ever heard "optimise for the general case"? How many EVs are on the road? How long before the number of EVs on the road comes close to decreases in number of miles driven or gas milage increases on combustion based cars in terms of "missing" tax revenue?
You can use the roads without paying much tax by riding a bicycle too. Or a moped/scooter in many places...or by walking. Only the last of those is likely to represent a significant loophole in terms of potential revenue. Maybe they should tax sneakers and shoes? Will that make being barefoot a loophole?
I have a friend J. There are many things I would trust J with. I would trust him to sleep over in my house, to be there when I am not there. If I had a pile of hundred dollar bills, I would trust him to gaurd them while I went somewhere.
I have other friend's I might trust to load up that pile and bring it to me. I don't trust his judgement enough to do that because I fully expect him to leave it on the front seat with the car running while he just runs into the store real quck to grab a drink.
Different kinds of trust there.
The problem with this question is, its more what-if conspiracy than a question of trust. Can we trust that Bruce isn't working for the CIA and helping to cover up their real knowledge of crypto? What an odd thing to not trust. What would it mean to not trust that?
If I don't trust that he isn't, then I am assuming such a conspiracy must exist and they must have these capabilities? What does that mean to me? Do I start combing over his statements about trusting twofish and AES, and refuse to use anything but el-gamal?
Perhaps it means we need to look to other experts, are people saying AES and twofish are good all working for the CIA? Are some of them just parroting puppets? Or is there real opposition to his statements?
So far, if we want to assume this we must also assume that he, or he and a very select few others, have some idea of what he is covering up or at least what the party line message is. If anything he said was known to be untrue, even just to a few other experts, wouldn't we expect that they would call him out on that?
So where are we in a world where all of the experts are NSA puppets, so that nobody is left who can challenge them technically? This entire conspiracy theory gets ridiculous pretty fast.
Whats funny about that is, I am pretty sure I suggested XOR in CBC mode to someone recently as a joke. Didn't even realize I was suggesting they use unexportable munitions:)
Hmmm so if someone was a threat, they would want one of these pre-check cards? Seems like anyone with a pre-check card should be considered suspect and marked for enhanced scrutiny.
Seems a simple solution. Name a new standard "CSB" or Compatible Serial Bus. It is identical to USB in every way, except reserves several sections of the VID range that are currently unused (there are many there is plenty of ID space) to be designated through this new body.
Then tell them which ranges you chose and that they can go fuck themselves, as they will be screwing over any vendor they assign those VIDs to, knowing that somebody else is claiming them and they are likely to cause conflicts.
As much as I mostly agree, I think its more a bit of being spineless than dick heads. Facebook is, at the end of the day, not going to be banned in the UK, and the company is a US company anyway.
Standing up to Cameron doesn't take much spine, its basically just good PR for Facebook.
Porn and erotic images (a friend was recently ranting about people reporting a picture a friend of her posted where her friend was wearing body paint) on the other hand, while they likely could get away with it, and could fight the shitstorm that it kicked up....have no incentive to do so.
Instead they put it on their users. Lock down your porn so only a few people can see it, and there is no real restriction. Close the closet door and you are ok, until you piss someone off and they report everything on your page.
Plus it would likely create sticky situations for them in making the min age to have an account lower than 18.
Easy, mostly it crept in with a lot of "Monkey See, monkey do".
It used to be there were no real central DBs of people's info. You don't have to go back far before the best records of who lived in a community were church baptismal records, and then Birth certificates. SS was really one of the first things where you could say just about every person here is enrolled and has a unique number.
Back then, SSN was pretty useless. Sure you could always try to commit SS fraud, but, since most people apply, and the money comes as checks, its not something you should expect to get away with for long and without consequence.... not to mention its not like you can just go in and drain someones SS, as its a time based benefit (unless they are already dead of course).
So as different orgs, states with drivers licenses (when i applied for my license in the mid 90s you still had the option of using your SSN, and some people CHOSE to!) decided to use it as an identifier, it made perfect sense, at the time.
The problem isn't so much that people use SSN. Its really almost more of a tragedy of the commons: Because what is a small concern when one group uses it, becomes a huge concern when every group uses it.
Not only that, but add a little circular logic.... SSN is good because your SSN is secret, nobody else knows it. Therefore if we use it as your ID we know its unique and we know its you. Makes perfect sense....until everyone else does it and the idea that your SSN is secret totally breaks down as everybody expects you to just give it to them to identify yourself.
frankly, I think this is a meaningless question. What does "Socially ready" even mean? Society does not "prepare" for change. Change happens and then society adapts. Or more accurately, change happens, some people adapt, and children grow up knowing a new society that never didn't have that change and can't conceive of a world that didn't have it.... then they grow up to ask whether society is ready for the next change, which their children will grow up familiar with, and who will think their parents were silly, crazy, and overly paranoid for doubting.
If they happened every other week they might be worth talking about. You are talking about something that happens less often than that, over a sample size of 300 million people in 3.97 million square miles. Anything that happens at least once a day over such a sample size is pretty fucking rare....and these massacres happen, maybe once or twice a year at most.
Been listening to too much Bill Hicks recently "Why aren't you working?" "There is nothing to do" "Then pretend like you are busy" "You get paid more than me, you fantasize. Hell, pretend I am mopping, go hog wild"
Kind of like how you should put the mask on your own face before helping the person sitting next to you on a plane. Its all well and good to help others but, sometimes the best help you can give is first making sure you wont become the next burden.
> he problem with paying for this kind of welfare out of risk-blind insurance payments is that you end > up making insurance blind to preventable pre-existing conditions as well, removing a strong > incentive for people to stay healthy.
I understand that theory, I don't buy it. Too simple and ignores the fact that diseases themselves are much stronger incentive. Do you REALLY think that many people are just like "Well if I smoke and get lung cancer, insurance will pay so its ok"? Do you really think the people who do say things like that are not just rationalizing a decision they already made?
I really think this ignores the realities of how people actually think and make decisions.
Just because you can imagine something could be a strong incentive, doesn't make it one.
> NOTHING that Snowden revealed was a "secret." > His revelations are simply not confined to the realm of conspiracy theory, anymore.
I think I take issue with both of these statements.
The truth was indeed secret. What we had were not conspiracy theories, but speculation. We all knew the NSA existed, we all knew some minor details about their operation. People had good reason to suspect some of their capabilities and how they would or could really spy on people if they wanted to.
What he did was expose the secret truth, which happened to be not far off from the speculation and rumors that were the result of many educated people making guesses based on what they saw as possible.
It was widely speculated that massive internet monitoring was possible and even feasible if you had the ability to be inserted at the right places on the network backbone. It was widely speculated that if anybody could be inserted in enough of the right places, it was the NSA.
However, being that it was possible and that they had the resources to do it, doesn't mean we knew they did it. Now we know they did.
Conspiracy theory is when you assert unproven connections to explain events. Like when you posit that a conspiracy of people working together prepared the towers to come down. That is conspiracy theory. Not all speculation is conspiracy theory.
Slashdot Mirror
More like
while true
do
sleep 300
if false; then
for i in $SILO; do
launch $i
done
# XXX: Add case to check blast doors
fi
done
Except perhaps, closing the blast doors while napping.
> All you fools who called Bush II "the worst President ever" are now seeing the true worst President
> ever in action.
Obama had not been president during bush, so its not an either or, they can both be the worst president ever for their time in history, and I would submit, that is not only what happened, but its an unbroken tradition since at least Ike.
> Jimmy Carter - previous holder of that title - is ecstatic.
He was dethroned handidly by Reagan. Reagan who continued to push the drug war bringing us the highest murder rate since alcohol prohibition ended. We saw the draining of the SSI trust fund (which was supposed to be firewalled from the rest of the budget) under him. We saw a terrible arms race that helped to set up many of our current day wars...and the massive increase in national debt.
> Don't think 0bama is the worst ever?
Someone might not, but, hes at least on par with the rest of them.
yup, that is exactly what I was thinking. Essentially, beyond their TM, they have very little stick to wave around.
If hobbiest and small manufacturer squatters start using a VID or two and they decide to assign that VID to someone, that company is going to get screwed and is going to be mad about it, but, when they find out that the USB folks had been informed and knew about the squatters, and assigned him that VID anyway....hes likely to be mad....at them.
Its a problem they can really do nothing about unless they decide to play nice and try to mitigate it.
All in all though, this is why I like UUID OID schemes. Just make a large enough space that collisions are less likely than hitting a full Keno slate (which has never been reported to have actually happened, despite the constant stream of games being played)
Then you have your certification process certify an approved list of OID that have been submitted and gone through the process.
Um you mean above and beyond sales tax? Cars generally are subject to sales tax too, this is more about use tax. Car road use tax is implemented as a gas tax. I know of nothing similar for shoes and sneakers.
> Surely the point of doing illegal cash business *is* to evade the taxes, otherwise what would be the
> point doing it?
However, without the illegal cash business, there are no taxes to pay. The point of the business is not to evade taxes, its to make money. It is true that most illegal businesses do not pay taxes, but to say that is the point of them is really to put the cart before the horse.
The point of doing it is likely that he makes more as a bookie than he would at any legal job he could get. Also, and mind you, I don't know the guy and can't ask him, he might actually enjoy the business itself.
> If he's reporting his illegal cash business then he must be paying the correct tax on it otherwise the
> IRS response would be "yes, he didn't pay tax on XYZ portion of his income". By paying the tax
> he's breaking the law, informing the authorities and *not getting any benefit from it
No, by paying the tax he is complying with the law. He broke the law by how he got the money in the first place. Not paying the tax is actually breaking an additional law, on top of the one that he broke in making his income.
> Step 4 is traditionally supposed to be "profit"...
I suspect he does, hand over fist, Uncle Sam isn't putting him out of business, just getting his beak wet.
Not sure many corporations would have bothered to put the effort in, even so, most corporations have not taken the mantle unto themselves to be the model for freedom and justice in the world (I know; stop laughing, I am trying to make a point here) .
What others would do is immaterial, what they should have done is realized that part of their job is to set an example and that example includes respecting the right of people to freely assemble (even in new technological forms) and speak
Given that whoever it was only spoke and gave away nothing that would otherwise constitute a crime, they should have not even attempted to discover who he was.
> By the way, the phrase "security through obscurity" is a reference to encryption schemes that rely
> upon the algorithm not being known for its protective value, not to the general idea of
> keeping secrets.
Which is why he used it correctly. Remember the claim is that public knowledge that the programs really exist and basics on how they work is enogh to decrease their utility ot make them not work.
So the very working of the system is, claimed anyway, to rely on obscurity to work.
As a Boston city boy, I may not have had exposure to gun owners if not for my father, who became a non-gun owning city dweller, AFTER living in the country where you were expected to have a gun by the age of 12 or so; and having been a hunter.
I remember realizing that to have a gun and hunt you would have to get out there to the hunting grounds with your gun so you must have to transport it, so I asked him about that, and so from an early age I was told that, in fact, its perfectly legal to transport guns, even in the city, but there are rules. He also told me one other thing.....
He told me that whenever he had to travel in public with one of his guns, he would always take the bolt out and shove it in his pocket. That way it was obvious (to anyone with half a brain, but particularly to any police) that it was unloaded and safe. So....even 30 years ago when I was just a kid...these issues were definitely on the minds of gun owners.
The gov already has an answer to privacy concerns like this. They have already implemented it. I do, for the record, dislike and distrust it, but, they have one: Seal the records.
An accountant friend explained to me once why a bookie he knows reports 100% of his income to the IRS, including the illegal cash business. The reasoning was simple, if the police suspect an illegal business but can't fully prove it, they can ask the IRS to check out whether it looks like you evaded taxes.
Now, the police can't access your records, the IRS, by law, must keep those records secret. However, they can, review and audit themselves. So, the police can tip off the IRS that you have an illegal business, but if you reported all the income, all the IRS can do is say "Everything looks in order".
So simple: Seal the records with a traffic tax agency, who is forbidden by law from releasing any personally identifying information, except for the purpose of prosecuting evasion of the taxes which they are charged with collecting.... say until.... 75 years after the death of the identified individual.
Then they will secretly share it all with the NSA, who will use it to send anonymous tips to law enforcement to built parallel evidence chains against people without revealing where the tip came from. No problem!
Ever heard "optimise for the general case"? How many EVs are on the road? How long before the number of EVs on the road comes close to decreases in number of miles driven or gas milage increases on combustion based cars in terms of "missing" tax revenue?
You can use the roads without paying much tax by riding a bicycle too. Or a moped/scooter in many places...or by walking. Only the last of those is likely to represent a significant loophole in terms of potential revenue. Maybe they should tax sneakers and shoes? Will that make being barefoot a loophole?
Tell that to Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, Norton I.
-Steve, Imperator of the Legion of Earth, God-King of all mankind.
Exactly.
I have a friend J. There are many things I would trust J with. I would trust him to sleep over in my house, to be there when I am not there. If I had a pile of hundred dollar bills, I would trust him to gaurd them while I went somewhere.
I have other friend's I might trust to load up that pile and bring it to me. I don't trust his judgement enough to do that because I fully expect him to leave it on the front seat with the car running while he just runs into the store real quck to grab a drink.
Different kinds of trust there.
The problem with this question is, its more what-if conspiracy than a question of trust. Can we trust that Bruce isn't working for the CIA and helping to cover up their real knowledge of crypto? What an odd thing to not trust. What would it mean to not trust that?
If I don't trust that he isn't, then I am assuming such a conspiracy must exist and they must have these capabilities? What does that mean to me? Do I start combing over his statements about trusting twofish and AES, and refuse to use anything but el-gamal?
Perhaps it means we need to look to other experts, are people saying AES and twofish are good all working for the CIA? Are some of them just parroting puppets? Or is there real opposition to his statements?
So far, if we want to assume this we must also assume that he, or he and a very select few others, have some idea of what he is covering up or at least what the party line message is. If anything he said was known to be untrue, even just to a few other experts, wouldn't we expect that they would call him out on that?
So where are we in a world where all of the experts are NSA puppets, so that nobody is left who can challenge them technically? This entire conspiracy theory gets ridiculous pretty fast.
Whats funny about that is, I am pretty sure I suggested XOR in CBC mode to someone recently as a joke. Didn't even realize I was suggesting they use unexportable munitions :)
Hmmm so if someone was a threat, they would want one of these pre-check cards? Seems like anyone with a pre-check card should be considered suspect and marked for enhanced scrutiny.
Just looking over this: http://www.linux-usb.org/usb.ids first list I could find of Vendor IDs.
Seems a simple solution. Name a new standard "CSB" or Compatible Serial Bus. It is identical to USB in every way, except reserves several sections of the VID range that are currently unused (there are many there is plenty of ID space) to be designated through this new body.
Then tell them which ranges you chose and that they can go fuck themselves, as they will be screwing over any vendor they assign those VIDs to, knowing that somebody else is claiming them and they are likely to cause conflicts.
Problem solved.
As much as I mostly agree, I think its more a bit of being spineless than dick heads. Facebook is, at the end of the day, not going to be banned in the UK, and the company is a US company anyway.
Standing up to Cameron doesn't take much spine, its basically just good PR for Facebook.
Porn and erotic images (a friend was recently ranting about people reporting a picture a friend of her posted where her friend was wearing body paint) on the other hand, while they likely could get away with it, and could fight the shitstorm that it kicked up....have no incentive to do so.
Instead they put it on their users. Lock down your porn so only a few people can see it, and there is no real restriction. Close the closet door and you are ok, until you piss someone off and they report everything on your page.
Plus it would likely create sticky situations for them in making the min age to have an account lower than 18.
Easy, mostly it crept in with a lot of "Monkey See, monkey do".
It used to be there were no real central DBs of people's info. You don't have to go back far before the best records of who lived in a community were church baptismal records, and then Birth certificates. SS was really one of the first things where you could say just about every person here is enrolled and has a unique number.
Back then, SSN was pretty useless. Sure you could always try to commit SS fraud, but, since most people apply, and the money comes as checks, its not something you should expect to get away with for long and without consequence.... not to mention its not like you can just go in and drain someones SS, as its a time based benefit (unless they are already dead of course).
So as different orgs, states with drivers licenses (when i applied for my license in the mid 90s you still had the option of using your SSN, and some people CHOSE to!) decided to use it as an identifier, it made perfect sense, at the time.
The problem isn't so much that people use SSN. Its really almost more of a tragedy of the commons: Because what is a small concern when one group uses it, becomes a huge concern when every group uses it.
Not only that, but add a little circular logic.... SSN is good because your SSN is secret, nobody else knows it. Therefore if we use it as your ID we know its unique and we know its you. Makes perfect sense....until everyone else does it and the idea that your SSN is secret totally breaks down as everybody expects you to just give it to them to identify yourself.
frankly, I think this is a meaningless question. What does "Socially ready" even mean? Society does not "prepare" for change. Change happens and then society adapts. Or more accurately, change happens, some people adapt, and children grow up knowing a new society that never didn't have that change and can't conceive of a world that didn't have it.... then they grow up to ask whether society is ready for the next change, which their children will grow up familiar with, and who will think their parents were silly, crazy, and overly paranoid for doubting.
If they happened every other week they might be worth talking about. You are talking about something that happens less often than that, over a sample size of 300 million people in 3.97 million square miles. Anything that happens at least once a day over such a sample size is pretty fucking rare....and these massacres happen, maybe once or twice a year at most.
Been listening to too much Bill Hicks recently
"Why aren't you working?"
"There is nothing to do"
"Then pretend like you are busy"
"You get paid more than me, you fantasize. Hell, pretend I am mopping, go hog wild"
You might go for that, I am not intersted in having some company play parent for me.
Kind of like how you should put the mask on your own face before helping the person sitting next to you on a plane. Its all well and good to help others but, sometimes the best help you can give is first making sure you wont become the next burden.
> he problem with paying for this kind of welfare out of risk-blind insurance payments is that you end
> up making insurance blind to preventable pre-existing conditions as well, removing a strong
> incentive for people to stay healthy.
I understand that theory, I don't buy it. Too simple and ignores the fact that diseases themselves are much stronger incentive. Do you REALLY think that many people are just like "Well if I smoke and get lung cancer, insurance will pay so its ok"? Do you really think the people who do say things like that are not just rationalizing a decision they already made?
I really think this ignores the realities of how people actually think and make decisions.
Just because you can imagine something could be a strong incentive, doesn't make it one.
> NOTHING that Snowden revealed was a "secret."
> His revelations are simply not confined to the realm of conspiracy theory, anymore.
I think I take issue with both of these statements.
The truth was indeed secret. What we had were not conspiracy theories, but speculation. We all knew the NSA existed, we all knew some minor details about their operation. People had good reason to suspect some of their capabilities and how they would or could really spy on people if they wanted to.
What he did was expose the secret truth, which happened to be not far off from the speculation and rumors that were the result of many educated people making guesses based on what they saw as possible.
It was widely speculated that massive internet monitoring was possible and even feasible if you had the ability to be inserted at the right places on the network backbone. It was widely speculated that if anybody could be inserted in enough of the right places, it was the NSA.
However, being that it was possible and that they had the resources to do it, doesn't mean we knew they did it. Now we know they did.
Conspiracy theory is when you assert unproven connections to explain events. Like when you posit that a conspiracy of people working together prepared the towers to come down. That is conspiracy theory. Not all speculation is conspiracy theory.